Former presidential challenger Abdullah Abdullah speaks to the media during a press conference at his home on Nov. 4, 2009, in Kabul. / Paula Bronstein, Getty Images

by Carmen Gentile
Special for USA TODAY, USA TODAY

by Carmen Gentile
Special for USA TODAY, USA TODAY

KABUL -- Afghan political aspirants say the election to replace President Hamid Karzai will only result in unrest if something is not done now to ensure its results are untainted by fraud.

Former presidential candidate and long-time Karzai rival, Abdullah Abdullah said in an interview with USA TODAY that he has yet to decide if he will run in the election, not scheduled to take place until the spring of 2014.

But he says already he sees problems. Among them is the extreme difficulty he would have trying to campaign in the mountainous north where most ethnic Tajiks who make up his base reside.

"How can one even campaign in those parts of the country in the winter?" he asks, explaining that many mountain passes and roads will still be blocked by ice and snow in springtime.

Abdullah withdrew from the 2009 second-round election runoff amid widespread accusations of pro-Karzai vote-rigging, fraud and election poll intimidation. The United Nations was among the critics of the vote.

Abdullah says the next president will face enormous challenges to keeping his country stable and democratic, something U.S. and allied troops have fought and died for over the past 10 years.

Among the problems to rectify: top-to-bottom government corruption. The country's next president must reform a notoriously corrupt judiciary and allow provincial governors to be elected rather than appointed by the president as they are now.

Ending financial corruption is also a factor for a stable future, he says.

A review released by the International Monetary Fund said that hundreds of millions of dollars from Kabul Bank were smuggled out of Afghanistan - some packed inside airline food trays loaded onto international flights to be deposited in bank accounts in more than two dozen countries.

Loans were made but rarely repaid, the report said. Borrowers took out loans to pay back loans. Company documents and financial statements were fabricated. The smuggling scheme led to the collapse of the bank, the nation's largest financial institution.

"The biggest challenge is that the absence of the rule of law is now the rule of law in Afghanistan," says Abdullah, who previously served under Karzai and is now a critic of his administration.

Several critics accuse Karzai of ignoring the needs of the majority of Afghans for the benefit of family and business associates. Karzai, who is serving his second five-year term, said that corruption is due to the way NATO and the United States have set up the contracting process in Afghanistan.

"The contracts are not issued by the Afghan government. The contracts are issued by the international community, mainly by the United States," he said. "Now whether this corruption in Afghanistan is an accident, a byproduct of the situation in the past 10 years or is it perpetrated also on purpose is today my main question."

Karzai said Thursday he will meet President Barack Obama in Washington next month to discuss a U.S. role in his country in the future.

"Give us a good army, a good air force and a capability to project Afghan interests in the region," Karzai said.

Dark horse contender Mirwais Yasini, a member of parliament from Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, says that if Afghanistan holds a "fair, transparent election, then I'll be there."

Yasini ran in 2009, coming in fifth among a field of nearly 40 candidates, and says it will be hard for him or anyone not favored by Karzai to prevail because they will not have access to much in the way of campaign funds.

"I am not a corrupt person so it will be difficult for me to raise as much money as other candidates," Yasini says.

Yasini sees the main issues as persistent security concerns and a lack of a viable, self-sustaining economy outside the illicit opium trade.

"Right now we are living off of other taxpayers," he says referring to the billions of dollars in international aid contributed by international donors, most notably the United States.

Yasini, like Abdullah, expresses concern about the legitimacy of the 2014 election were it to resemble the previous presidential election in 2009. The International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution think tank, agrees.

"It is a near certainty that under current conditions the 2014 elections will be plagued by massive fraud," reads a recent Crisis Group report. "High levels of violence across the country before and on the day of the polls are likely to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands more would-be voters."

The group says the previous elections' chaos and chicanery risk triggering a constitutional crisis and erode trust in the democratic institutions that the USA and others have spent billions of dollars to build.

"In the current environment, prospects for clean elections and a smooth transition are slim," it said, referring to the possibility that Karzai may act to ensure his family maintains some power.

Among the potential candidates are Karzai's elder brother Quayum Karzai, an elected official in Afghanistan and a businessman in the USA. Afghanistan's education minister, Ghulam Farooq Wardak, a Karzai appointee, could earn the president's endorsement as well.

Former Karzai ally Mohammad Hanif Atmar, the country's one-time interior minister, has said he may run as has Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an Ivy League graduate, and former officials at the World Bank and United Nations.

No matter who runs, Abdullah says they must face up to the problem of continued militancy. By the time the election rolls around, all U.S. combat troops will have left the country under current plans of President Obama.

But Abdullah said he believes it won't be insurgents who can take down what they have spent years building.

"The main challenge for security won't come just from the Taliban," he says. "Corruption can turn this country into a failed state."